Help with Kitchen Cabinets!

A few years ago we moved into our condo and we had those 80’s oak kitchen cabinets. I stained them using mixwax woodfinish stain. Looked great! Couldn’t be happier.

Well a little while later, around the handles they started to chipping and we could see the oak underneath. I just tried patching those areas and it just doesn’t look good. You can see the patch job around the handles and it does not look nice.

I have no idea what to do, we want to sell late next year but don’t want to put in a new kitchen (it is a small kitchen but its wil still be like $3000, money we don’t have). Can I sand it all down and paint them or stain them with gel stain?

I was looking at just the cabinet fronts from like ikea but 2 issues are that the hinge holes may not line up to hang the new doors on the old cabinet frames and also I have 1 really weird 10 inch wide drawer bank that must have been custom and that increases the cost as I have to get a custom bank of door fronts for it.

Also, If you don’t want to pay the money, but your willing to do the work, you can buy unfinished cabinet fronts. They sell them at some hardware stores, and are a lot cheaper than finished ones. We are planning to completely re-do the cabinets in our house this summer. I priced these cabinets at around 1K for a 13X12-ish sized kitchen.

missjewels: Personally if I didn’t replace the doors, I would paint. You just have to sand enough to give the new paint a surface to grip on to. You coould also use a primer like Zinsser Bullseye that adheres to glossy surfaces and basically eliminates sanding (except for thos chips and gouges which shoojuld be filled and sanded first).